Assistant Psychologist Homelessness Service

Job overview

This post for an Assistant Psychologist to join established psychology team in Adult Mental Health.  The overall aim of this post is to increase access to psychological support for homeless people and the staff who work with them.

The main aims of the post are to work alongside individuals who are homeless, who have often had difficult experiences in their interactions with the NHS and many have experienced significant trauma in their life. Many of our service users have multiple and complex needs including mental health difficulties, substance use dependence and/ or cognitive impairments.

We promote a trauma and attachment informed model of care and our service is open to both staff and service users within the homelessness context. To enable access to services we work as an advocate for service users and staff with multiple agencies to ensure their needs are met, and we have developed good relationships to enable this. Engagement is a core element of the role, with service users, staff teams and multiple agencies, and we were short listed for an NHS award in 2025 due to our cross boundary working.

This post is a fixed term/secondment for 8 months until 31st March 2027 to meet the needs of the service.  If you are interested in applying for the secondment position, you must obtain permission from your current line manager prior to applying for this post.

Main duties of the job

• Organise and facilitate drop-ins for staff and service users who are experiencing homelessness in community environments where they reside/ attend.
• Engagement is a key element of this role, and being alongside people when they are ready to engage.
• Assessment of needs, including cognitive assessments, and appropriate sign-posting and advocacy to meet identified needs, under the supervision of a practitioner psychologist.
• Escalating concerns regarding risk and complex needs and working within your competencies.
• Individual and group interventions within the hostels and drop-ins.
• Supporting the ongoing implementation of psychologically informed environments in the hostels offering team formulation, reflective practice and critical incident debriefing.
• Involvement in the delivery of G-REP, an EMDR based approach to resilience building, to all staff working in the homeless sector
• Interface with NHS services and other agencies, ensuring reasonable adjustments are made and advocating for individuals.
• Applying a trauma and attachment informed approach to all aspects of the role.
• Accessing supervision and appropriate training.
• Due to the funding of this service, we provide ongoing evaluation of our work to commissioners and other interested parties, which you would have a lead role in compiling and presenting data for stakeholders.
• Involvement in the activities of the broader ABUHB Adult Psychology Service.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

You will be able to find a full Job description and Person Specification attached within the supporting documents or please click “Apply now” to view in Trac.

Main responsibilities involve working with the homelessness psychology team to support  homeless individuals and staff working in the homeless sector within a trauma and attachment informed framework. The requires lone working but your work will be overseen and support offered by the principle clinical psychologist.